Wednesday, July 22, 2015

ARMY CHIEF ODIERNO - AGREEING WITH SEC DEF PANETTA: OBAMA LOST IRAQ

It's frustrating to watch it,” Odierno said. “I go back to the work we did in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 and we got it to a place that was really good. Violence was low, the economy was growing, politics looked like it was heading in the right direction.”Odierno said the fall of large parts of Iraq was not inevitable, reiterating concerns about the pace of the U.S. troop withdrawal there.“If we had stayed a little more engaged, I think maybe it might have been prevented,” he said. “I've always believed the United States played the role of honest broker between all the groups and when we pulled ourselves out, we lost that role.”In 2009, while still the top commander in Iraq, Odierno recommended keeping 30,000-35,000 U.S. troops after the end of 2011, when the U.S. was scheduled to pull out. The recommendation was not followed.“I think it would have been good for us to stay,” Odierno said, when asked if it was a mistake to pull out.

... former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta suggests that President Obama failed to heed his advisers who wanted to leave troops in Iraq past December 2011, which may have contributed to the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)."It was clear to me--and many others--that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability then barely holding Iraq together," Panetta writes...

THE BIG MISTAKE OF THE LAST TEN YEARS WAS NOT FIGHTING AND DEFEATING SADDAM, OR THE SURGE.

THE BIG MISTAKE WAS OBAMA WITHDRAWING FROM A STABLE IRAQ AND HANDING IT OVER TO IRAN AND ISIS.